Kemper Stage Vs Neural DSP Quad Cortex
This seemed like the best thread to share my Kemper to QC journey, impressions and pro/cons.
As you may know, I've been a Kemper fanboy for a while and I've made literally thousands of profiles but when Neural DSP launched the Quad Cortex I got excited and decided I would try to make the switch.
The QC seemed really attractive compared to the Kemper because it is a fraction of the size, has a full-color touch screen, the stomp switches are the knobs which is convenient and saves room and it can store double the amount of patches onboard. The Kemper holds 1000 which seems like it should be more than enough but I'm constantly having to move stuff to local storage so I can create more new profiles. The QC can also put multiple captures inline, which means you can capture an amp and a pedal separately and then pair them together digitally. In the Kemper you have to own the amp and pedal at the same time, so you can create a capture of them together. The QC will also send both midi CC and PC whereas the Kemper will only send PCs. This feature mattered to me because I use a Future Impact Synth that I like to control via midi when I select patches. In order to switch on the FI and change the patch, it requires both CC & PC messages, so with the Kemper, I have to use a Morningstar to convert the PC messages into multiple PC&CC messages for the FI. The QC had no problem controlling the FI, so I got a TON of pedal board real estate back between the much small QC size and dropping the giant M6. I was able to trade down from a 26"x16" to a 22"x12"
I spent a lot of time rebuilding my board and moving profiles because I was sure the QC was the nextgen replacement and honestly the QC captures are better-sounding IMHO than the Kemper profiles.The both ha e their own pedal board power problems. The Kemper stage uses a traditional IEC power cord so you can run it with a pedal board power supply and I had to add a power strip under the board. The QC can run on a Coiks DC but it's 12v at 3 amp so it requires special serial power cables and takes up all the 12v slots. Even using all the slots to get to 3 amp it's barely runs it and with shut down if you tax it by cranking the brightness and stuff. I also have a shure wireless on my board that requires 12v and there wasn't a 12v slot to power it so I ended up putti g a power strip under the new board too which defeated the purpose.
As far a captures go the QC does a better job. It would caputure stuff the Kemper just can't, especially crazy Fuzz and noise makers like the Doom2. The trade of is the the QC takes FOREVER to make a single capture and there is no desktop app, so you have to do all the editing from the device. Even though the QCs initial capture is better than the Kemper profile I can dial in the Kemper better with all its Definition, Shape and Bias type perimeters on the desktop app. I never found a good way to consistently and reliably tweak the captures on the QC plus without a desktop app all those tweaks have to be done on the device which makes it take longer. So ultimately, while the initial capture sounded more accurate on the QC, the final patch that I actually used, always sounded better on the Kemper. In fairness, you are not "supposed to be able" to use the Kemper desktop app while capturing profiles but I do it all the time. I don't know if the QCcan ever make a desktop app work I. capture mode because having the USB plugged in always introduced a bunch of noise. Also, the Headphone amp on the QC is awful and sounds like total butt. So you have to do all your captures at full volume on the cab or they are not even close when you switch from headphones to main outs, I find that to be a total deal breaker because I like to work at night when the kids are asleep. Once you make your captures on the QC you can't store them locally. You can only store QC captures on the device or in the neural cloud moving them back and forth from the device to the cloud is a one-at-a-time manual process that is a pain and takes forever. It also means you can't resell any captures you make on the QC like you can with Kemper profiles. I thought the QC was going to have an edge on studio track reamping For studio track reamping because it can reamp via USB which makes it easier to setup and use. The Kemper has to use Spidf or send/return loop to reamp which makes the routing more complicated and most interfaces don't have spidf. However since the usb is open on the Kemper I can use the desktop app to tweak the tone while reamping, so I always got a much better result.
Beyond that, it turns out that the Kemper is an all-around better piece of hardware for live gigs. The QCs big advantage live, is the multiple different performance modes. You can use it like a pedal board to stomp in fx, or set song/setlist presets or put all your favorite tones on footswitches to change from OD to slap, etc. and those modes can be footswitched on the fly so you can use presets for one song and pedal board for the next, Which is awesome. While the performance modes are cool the first big drawback live for the QC is that it just is not loud enough, I use the Kemper to push a set of powered cabs I have a Barefaced FR800 and a Bergantino IP112 and that rig is crazy loud. I could never get enough volume out of the QC to handle even small rooms it just wouldn't push the amps. I could have added a pedalboard amp like a Jule 500 but after trading down pedalboards I didn't have room and I would have had to change my cabs and making those changes kind of defeated the whole point of switching. The QC was also missing some obvious simple features like a global volume pedal setting. You have to set up the volume pedal on each individual patch. It was a real hassle and it was easy to overlook or set up wrong and cause volume issues live. Also, there was just little stuff, like it didn't automatically switch to the tuner when the volume pedal is all the way down. Plus the tuner didn't seem as accurate as the strobe tuner in the Kemper. The Kemper also has more I/O options.
So, after a couple of months of trying to switch to the QC, I ended up going back to the Kemper. The Kemper tech is getting pretty long in the tooth and I'm hoping that there is a next-gen version in the works that will shrink the footprint, add more memory, color touchscreen and add some of the missing features like using multiple profiles at the same time, and MIDI CC messages.
I'm not holding my breath for Kemper to make any of those updates because the midi thing seems like the kind of feature that could be added to the current product with a software patch but I and others have made the feature request and still no. I not surprised because Kemper doesn't seem too interested in the feature requests. I mentioned that I use the desktop app while profiling. The Kemper app occasionally has some issues with copying the field data and the issues change from version to version but overall it works fine. However, when I submitted tickets for issues with the desktop app they told me I wasn't supposed to use it that way and made the controls greyed out while in capture mode on the next version. It's no big deal, you just have to switch back to browser mode after the capture but it's an extra step and shows that their customer support is kind of lame. Instead of working toward the feature request, they just told me don't do that and then tried to remove the feature I told them I was using regularly and successfully because they don't like the way I prefer to use their product and didn't want to support it. So while Kemper is still the winner for now, there is an opportunity for someone to come disrupt the space.
